​​​​John Blick​

Project Description:

For my Cross-Cultural Literacy Connections Project students from Northampton, PA high school would collaborate with students from Northampton High School in Hardingstone, UK to create interactive lessons comparing American and British literary movements, establishing how each movement is connected to each country, and analyzing them for their impact on modern literature. Students from Pennsylvania would be paired with an equal number of students from England to collaborate through Google Slides and Google Hangouts to create an interactive, self-paced lesson based on their research of their literary movement. They would meet on Google Hangouts to discuss and plan the research and the design of their lesson. From there, the project would be done on Google Slides and shared via Google to aid in the collaborative efforts of the groups. Once students completed their lesson, they would make it available to the other groups of students from each school engage in the lesson itself and comment on it. This offers everyone the opportunity to learn what others found through their research in a jigsaw format. Students would then give feedback on each groups lesson as they completed it, including an assessment of its quality. This student assessment  would be included in my own assessment of their projects.

Demonstrates Mastery:

This project is the culmination of careful planning to unite two different high school classes across two cultures. It forces collaboration and careful project planning through the use of technology and communication. Students would have the opportunity to learn about literature from another culture’s perspective, assimilate and combine that perspective with their own ideals, conduct research to build background knowledge, and construct an effective lesson to communicate their learning to other students from both high schools. The project creates a sense of ownership for the students who are creating the lesson, and the assessment at the end helps to ensure that they are creating a quality product the clearly shows their own learning through their ability to communicate it to other students.

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Reflection:

This project as described would require an idealistic set of circumstances. Separated by time zones, curriculum differences, and unknown levels of technology at the UK high school, this project will most likely remain theoretical for the foreseeable future in my district. I do believe it could be a very effective project that could teach students much more than a literary movement. As ambitious a project as it is, it’s something on my teaching bucket list as something to try someday when all things align properly and the impossible becomes possible. This could be a success on many levels, and through designing this project I was able to find new ways that my students could benefit from my instruction on a daily basis. While it may not currently be feasible to connect with students across the Atlantic, with the technology we do have we might be able to make a collaboration work with students in another part of this country or Canada. With just a few tweaks this lesson could be as effective in that setting as the one laid out.